Electric vehicles are becoming an increasingly viable alternative to traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Electric vehicles may have advantages in their compactness, simplicity of design, and in being potentially more environmentally friendly depending on the means by which the electricity used in the vehicle was originally generated. The prospect of using renewable energy sources to power automobiles in place of gasoline has obvious advantages as oil reserves across the globe become increasingly depleted.
Vehicle manufacturers continually add new structural features to vehicles to improve safety and/or performance. Many of these structural features are applicable to electric, hybrid, and non-electric vehicles equally, while others are more conducive to use in particular types of vehicles. For example, in a vehicle having a gasoline engine in the front, certain structures for improving performance, safety, and/or other characteristics of the vehicle may also have to accommodate the space, weight, and other characteristics of the engine. In an electric vehicle, corresponding structures may be designed differently, for example, to exploit the absence of the gasoline engine, while accommodating the presence of one or more batteries and electric motors.